1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to placing electronic devices into a special mode of operation during production or distribution. More particularly, the present invention relates to testing or loading software in a battery-powered electronic device such as a mobile wireless communication device during production or distribution, particularly prior to the device being attached to a battery.
2. Description of the Related Art
Modern electronic devices such as mobile wireless phones, portable digital assistants, digital cameras, portable storage devices, audio players and portable gaming devices often include sophisticated processing elements and memory devices for executing and storing software and data. For example, wireless mobile communication devices such as cellular phones often contain flash memory, processors and digital signal processors (DSPs) to implement their wireless communication functionality. During production, software for instructing these elements must be loaded into the electronic devices. It is also sometimes necessary to reload or update software to correct errors or provide additional features on the devices.
To permit software loading, the electronic device's communication ports, processing elements and memory devices must be powered and placed in a special mode of operation to actuate the load process. However, a battery is commonly not attached to the device at the stage of production or distribution when software loading must occur. As a consequence, current production methodologies rely on a time-consuming manual process of attaching a battery pack to the device, manually actuating a power-on button sequence to bring the device into operation in a special programming mode, and connecting the device to a personal computer (PC) or other production equipment to permit the software download.
As will be appreciated, it is not desirable to require a manual power-on process or to install a battery for the short time required to load software in a mass production environment. What is needed is a method and apparatus that provides battery-less power and automatic power-on of an electronic device during mass production software downloading.
In the following detailed description of exemplary embodiments of the invention, reference is made to the accompanying drawings, which form a part hereof, and in which is shown by way of illustration specific exemplary embodiments in which the invention may be practiced.